La Vendée eBook

When he had finished his letter, he read it accurately
over, and then having carefully wiped his pen, and
laid it near his inkstand, he leant back in his chair,
and with his hand resting on the table, turned over
in his mind the names and deeds of those who were accounted
as his friends, but whom he suspected to be his enemies.
He had close to his hand slips of paper, on which
were written notes of the most trivial doings of those
by whom he was generally surrounded; and the very spies
who gave him the information were themselves the unfortunate
subjects of similar notices from others. The
wretched man was tortured by distrust; as he had told
his brother, there were not among the whole body of
those associates, by whose aid he had made himself
the ruling power in France, half-a-dozen whom he did
not believe to be eager for his downfall and his death.
Thrice, whilst thus meditating, he stopped, and with
his pencil put a dot against the name of a republican.
Unfortunate men! their patriotism did not avail them;
within a few weeks, the three had been added to the
list of victims who perished under the judicial proceedings
of Fouquier Tinville.

It had now become nearly dark, and Robespierre was
unable longer to read the unfriendly notices which
lay beneath his hand, and he therefore gave himself
up entirely to reflection. He began to dream of
nobler subjects—­to look forward to happier
days, when torrents of blood would be no longer necessary,
when traitors should no longer find a market for their
treason, when the age of reason should have prevailed,
and France, happy, free, illustrious, and intellectual,
should universally own how much she owed to her one
incorruptible patriot. He thought to himself
of living on his small paternal domain in Artois, receiving
nothing from the country he had blessed but adoration;
triumphant in the success of his theory; honoured
as more than mortal; evincing the grandeur of his
soul by rejecting those worldly rewards, which to his
disposition offered no temptation. But before
he had long indulged in this happy train of thought,
he was called back to the realities of his troubled
life by a low knock at his door, and on his answering
it, a young woman, decently, but very plainly dressed,
entered the garret with a candle in her hand; this
was Eleanor Duplay; and when Robespierre allowed himself
to dream of a future home, she was the wife of his
bosom, and the mother of his children.

CHAPTER II

Robespierre’slove.

Eleanor Duplay was not a beautiful young woman, nor
was there anything about her which marked her as being
superior to those of her own station of life; but
her countenance was modest and intelligent, and her
heart was sincere; such as she was she had won the
affection of him, who was, certainly, at this time
the most powerful man in France. She was about
five-and-twenty years of age; was the eldest of four